"Imagine you're actually doing the thing."

 

 And I got the job!

 It's okay to post old auditions from 2023, right? And it's okay if you want a quick clip for your new showreel to just film the television with your phone, it's fine, yeah? Great. Here it is then. 

 The title of this post comes from director Katrin Gebbe's excellent advice to me on the set of A Thousand Blows as horses, carriages and stallholders reset for the seventh or eighth take of me finally getting to run out of a pretend hotel for real – obviously, you don't forget something like that. Look out too for some lovely fortuitous swipes, my favourite having to be Kellie Bright condemned to skeletoning at 2:10.

 

 

NEW, PARTIALLY BLOCKED SHOWREEL!

 

 Now with added EastEnders, which means that even though I used a clip from EastEnders' youtube channel the video is still "partially blocked", so that only certain countries can see it. I don't know which countries. Has it been blocked inside Britain? Outside Britain? Are you in one of those countries? That's a shame. Let me know.*

 For those of you who can't enjoy it, off the back of Orson Welles' Haitian Macbeth here's more scrupulously researched Vodou. As a kid I rarely experienced a fear of missing out, but I remember never being taken to a massive out-of-town Toys R Us, and never being given Atmosfear or Nightmare or whatever these board games were called. Whoever came up with SNL's David S. Pumpkins sketch clearly had though, so enjoy, and happy season of the skeleton!**

 

 

 

 *UPDATE: Okay. Blocked in the UK. If you still want to see it I think THIS is the link to the Spotlight upload. 

 ** And if you simply want more of Baron Samedi and a man rocking around in a stationary ghost train, THIS is the link to the full music video.

Demo

NEW SHOWREEL!

 

 Finished. It's a shame my laptop's literally killing me, because I've remembered how much I love editing. Thanks are due to my agent Marie Findley, for once again being so bracingly ruthless in her suggestions of what to cut – five minutes is too long, she's right – including one clip from Death Meets Lisolette where I electrocuted myself, because it was "a bit of a lull". 

 Thanks also to Joel Morris, for noting how much a showreel is like the demo mode on a Casio keyboard: I only have Revenge, Horny and "Ah, Mister Bond" to go now, then I'll have the full set of timbres, the perfect showreel, and I can finally give up acting. 

 And thanks, finally, to the previous showreel, for helping me get some jobs to make this new one: acidentally killing someone on a sports day followed by four mintues of looking haunted and saying my name's Keith almost definitely got me Ghosts...

 

OLD SHOWREEL!

Seasonal Wear

  Well, the showreel worked. At the time of writing this I've been put up for at least two festive jobs where sad dads stare brokenly at bills. Here's the one I got. 

 It was filmed last week, around what used to be the Arndale Centre back when I grew up in Wandsworth. Behind me in the above screengrab is what used to be the Ram Brewery*, and in front of it, wearing the hi vis, is director Kevin Curtis. He writes about the youtube posting below "please ignore the misleading thumbnail - it’s been a source of great disagreement here with us!" but I don't know what he's talking about. Enjoy.

 

 And I've had a second Santa gig since, Nordic this time: long straight hair and a blue tunic, chuckling and waving carrots at party-goers while occasionally tugging at the necks of the People Pile like a consensual Jabba. That same night I dreamt the gig all over again - the only time I've ever dreamt a straight flashback -  but no photos were allowed, so here instead is a nice shot of what we did on Halloween, that particularly Mexican-themed Halloween of 2016 we spent a full week celebrating because it was the year of the dead. The invitation said "come dressed as your dark side" so here it is, you mothers!

taken by Graham Turner. More here.

 

 

   

 October looks warm now.

* When I was four, the Arndale Centre sported a poster for butter curls on toast and I thought that's where the smell of yeast was coming from.

There's actually an updated show reel with clips from "Suicide Hotline" here.
You can see a trailer for "Nightmare on Deskteeth Street" here.

And you can see what the Arndale Centre looked and sounded like when I was four, seven and a half minutes into an episode of Grange Hill here.

Reeling

 The world has got so unfaceable, fortunately, that this week saw me finally forced to ration my twitter and facebook use and get on with actually making something. Here is the result:

 I had a lot of fun doing this, partly because I got to recut things I was in so that they were more about me, obviously, but mainly because I finally get to put David Shire's score for "The Conversation" over footage of me skulking around a city, something I think everyone should try for themselves at least once.
Youtube love here. (Warning: now includes footage of me from later than 2004.)